HowTo get rid of GUIs to save space? knoppix takes 8gigs!

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10-19-2003, 01:18 PM
MemMaker

HowTo get rid of GUIs to save space? knoppix takes 8gigs!

Hi,
I am hoping to find a solution to the following problem:
after the knoppix hd install on a p133 with 96mb ram and
8gb scsi hdd and fiddling around with the apt-get upgrade options,
my linux system apparently (when i select all files on a windows box
over samba shares and rightclick for the filesize) takes up all of
the 8 gb of hdd-space I have. I only installed a few packages (apache2,
centericq, qwsv & ddclient).

1. Question: Can this be?
which linux command do I have to use find out about
the disk space usage?
2. is there a way to completely strip the
kde, xfree86, gnome, etc. GUI-stuff from debian/knoppix?

I am running this on a box which shall in the future run without
a monitor, so i won't use graphic intense applications, besides
of the missing cpu power..

Does anyone have some suggestions?
10-19-2003, 07:57 PM
fingers99

Quote:

1. Question: Can this be?

It's pretty damn unlikely. It seems to me that the 8Gb is simply the size of the partition.

To find out how much of it is full, use KDeiskFree.

I'm not sure what you're trying to do by pulling the GUI's off. Seems pretty drastic.
10-19-2003, 11:46 PM
Stephen

Re: HowTo get rid of GUIs to save space? knoppix takes 8gigs

Quote:

Originally Posted by MemMaker

Hi,
1. Question: Can this be?
which linux command do I have to use find out about
the disk space usage?

df -h in a console window.

Quote:

2. is there a way to completely strip the
kde, xfree86, gnome, etc. GUI-stuff from debian/knoppix?

I am running this on a box which shall in the future run without
a monitor, so i won't use graphic intense applications, besides
of the missing cpu power..

Does anyone have some suggestions?

apt-get --purge remove kdelibs4 kdebase libarts xserver-xfree86 xserver-common xlibs gnome-common

For anything left over dpkg --get-selections > selections.txt then edit the file and remove the lines of any other programs you do not want then dpkg --set-selections < selections.txt to import the package list and dselect update to update the package system then apt-get deselect-upgrade to upgrade to the packages in the list. After you are done you may want to run orphaner if it has not been removed and get rid of any old libraries left laying around and not in use, if it has been removed then apt-get install deborphan
10-20-2003, 03:22 AM
aay

[quote="fingers99"]

Quote:

To find out how much of it is full, use KDeiskFree.

I'm not sure what you're trying to do by pulling the GUI's off. Seems pretty drastic.

You can also use df from the command line to check out disk space.
10-20-2003, 06:34 PM
Dave_Bechtel

Re: HowTo get rid of GUIs to save space? knoppix takes 8gigs

--What in the world... Let me get this straight. You mounted your linux box's filesystem over **samba shares** and checked the disk space from WINDOWS :?:

(sputter)
(speechless)
:shock:

--I recommend finding a LUG (Linux Users Group) in your area as fast as possible, you've definitely been hanging around Windoze too long. :roll:

--Okay, just joking ;-), enough teasing. To check disk space for a specific directory (if you use / , it will check the whole system) use du. ' man du '

--Typical syntax:
' du -s -h /usr ' == Summary of /usr, in human-readable format
' du --max-depth=2 /home ' == See usage of /home/user1, /home/user2...
' du -h --max-depth=1 / ' == See usage of each dir hanging off of root

--And as others have mentioned, use ' df ' for usage of mounted filesystems/partitions. It also accepts the ' -h ' flag.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MemMaker

Hi,
I am hoping to find a solution to the following problem:
after the knoppix hd install on a p133 with 96mb ram and
8gb scsi hdd and fiddling around with the apt-get upgrade options,
my linux system apparently (when i select all files on a windows box
over samba shares and rightclick for the filesize) takes up all of
the 8 gb of hdd-space I have. I only installed a few packages (apache2,
centericq, qwsv & ddclient).

1. Question: Can this be?
which linux command do I have to use find out about
the disk space usage?
2. is there a way to completely strip the
kde, xfree86, gnome, etc. GUI-stuff from debian/knoppix?

I am running this on a box which shall in the future run without
a monitor, so i won't use graphic intense applications, besides
of the missing cpu power..

Does anyone have some suggestions?
10-21-2003, 09:27 PM
MemMaker

Thanks for the replies, i got the follwing output for "df -h":

Code:

[root@xserver]:[root]# df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1 8.1G 1.1G 6.7G 14% / /dev/root.old 2.2M 235K 2.0M 11% /initrd

There's one thing I wonder about, why's there a difference between used+
avail. compared to disksize? Is this because of the fs?

So I see i got plenty of space left on my hdd.. just a commom mistake..

I am stripping the GUIs because I want a slim machine and get
some knowledge about linux in general, also the mentioned system
(p133, 94mb ram, 512kb vga) would be to slow for the big one
like gnome and kde and so I decided to be a little more drastic.

@dave_bechtel
;p - not really, I didn't connect my windows machine to the linux
over samba just to check the filesize, it already was connected
so because the linux box acts as router/gateway for my win2k pc.
10-21-2003, 10:26 PM
MemMaker

@stephen
thanks for the purging commands..
well I got one mor Question about this:
How do I get apt-get do remove the
configuratoin dirs even when they aren't
empty?
10-21-2003, 10:45 PM
Stephen

Quote:

Originally Posted by MemMaker

@stephen
thanks for the purging commands..
well I got one mor Question about this:
How do I get apt-get do remove the
configuratoin dirs even when they aren't
empty?

Making sure that you are removing the right directory or you will screw up the system rm -rf /non/empty/directory/tree. I usually check just to make sure that it is only the configuration files left some packages don't clean up as well as they should and orphan the config files, it is usually only one or two files left in the whole directory tree anyway so you could just leave them there if you want.
10-22-2003, 12:50 AM
Dave_Bechtel

> There's one thing I wonder about, why's there a difference between used+
avail. compared to disksize? Is this because of the fs?

--Most likely the -h flag is doing some rounding.

Code:

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/hde3 2298164 997984 1300180 44% / Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/hde3 2.2G 975M 1.3G 44% /

--Using the second result, (1300*1024)+(975*1024) == 2329600, which is above the actual filesystem size. Even the actual (fdisk) size of the partition is only 2298240. If you need precice measurements, df w/o the -h flag gives the right results.

--FYI, I'm using reiserfs. If you're using ext2/ext3, a certain percentage of the fs is reserved for root (use tune2fs to check / modify == ' tune2fs -l /dev/blah ' to look ; ' tune2fs -m 1 /dev/blah ' to set reserved to 1%.)
10-22-2003, 08:17 PM
MemMaker

@stephen
The by-foot-way is what I wanted to avoid. I thought there
could be an easier possibility, e.g. something like:
"purge all non-empty removed-package config-dir".
But thanks anyway.

@dave
yes, i am using ext2. What are the differences, between
reiserfs, ext2 & ext3..? what would you recommend?
10-23-2003, 10:55 PM
Dave_Bechtel

o ext2 = Default filesystem for Linux, good for small filesystems like /boot and such, has been superseded by Journalling filesystems such as reiserfs, ext3, jfs, xfs. Can lose data if machine loses power, and bootup fsck can take quite some time.

o ext3 = Journalled ext2. See this article for more:
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerwork...ary/l-fs7.html

o Reiserfs = Journalling filesystem from the ground up. With default mount options, saves space by putting small files (and parts of files that would otherwise take up an entire cluster - otherwise known as tails) together. With mount option ' notail ' speeds up significantly. (I've been using reiserfs ever since suse included it as an install option - 6.x, IIRC.)

--You can find other articles on journalling filesystems by googling. (The above article was found by searching for "benefits of ext3".)

--In your situation, making your ext2 filesystem into ext3 is as simple as ' tune2fs -j /dev/blah ' and changing the /etc/fstab entry from ext2 to ext3. If you do a complete reinstall though, I recommend reiserfs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MemMaker

@stephen
The by-foot-way is what I wanted to avoid. I thought there
could be an easier possibility, e.g. something like:
"purge all non-empty removed-package config-dir".
But thanks anyway.

@dave
yes, i am using ext2. What are the differences, between
reiserfs, ext2 & ext3..? what would you recommend?
10-24-2003, 09:22 AM
MemMaker

@dave
OK, thanks for that, I'll do as you say and change my
fs to ext3 for now and next install I use reiserfs, sounds like quite
an improvement.
10-25-2003, 05:35 PM
plugwash

samba shows devices ie your hdd as though they were files

this is why you get theese results from the windows box